Coffee, Memory Loss and Christmas

I was glad to read recently that drinking coffee can help your short-term memory loss. You see, I'm a forgetful, coffee-drinking preacher.

Having a bad memory is not good when you are a minister. When I was pastor of Union Baptist Church in Roxie, Mississippi, our treasurer had a car wreck. I went to see her, and before leaving, I offered to pray for her. As I began the prayer, I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten her name! The church only had about 35 people attend each Sunday, so it wasn't like I had a lot of names to recall. Anyway, being the sophisticated young professional that I was, I blurted out, "What's your name?" She told me with a sad voice it was "Jean," and then I prayed aloud for God to heal Jean, and silently I prayed for God to get me out of there alive.

Another embarrassing moment of forgetfulness happened to me in New Orleans, where I went to seminary. My wife and I had left church, and I was driving home through a residential area. To my surprise, a New Orleans cop turned on his blue lights and pulled me over. As soon as I stopped, he got on his loudspeaker and announced loudly enough for the whole city to hear, "There's a book on your car." I got out, and saw that my black leather Bible was sitting on the roof of the car, just above the driver's seat. Apparently I left it there after church when I was talking to somebody. The Bible was open and its pages were in disarray, and the Sunday bulletin was gone, but at least my Bible didn't fall off the car. It would be hard to explain to my Bible professor why I trampled the Word of God with my tires. Red-faced, I retrieved the Bible, and the policeman smiled and drove away.

All of this reminds me (you see, the coffee-drinking is helping my memory already!) of how many people get forgetful at Christmas. Folks put up their holiday decorations and do their holiday shopping and send holiday cards with "Season's Greetings," and attend holiday parties and holiday parades. But they forget what the holiday is about.

This Christmas, don't forget to Whom we pray. His name is Jesus. This Christmas, don't forget the Book. It's called the Bible, and it has good news for you, that a Savior, Christ the Lord, was born in Bethlehem. May I make a suggestion? This Christmas, before you open any presents, curl up with a hot cup of coffee, open the Good Book to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2, and read the story to your family. You may find yourself saying, "Ah, I remember."

Copyright 2008 by Bob Rogers.

The pastor and the miser

I once had a church member who was a miser. To protect the guilty, I'll call him L.B.

Years ago, I was pastor a little rural church in southwest Mississippi. Soon after I came to the church, I began to hear tall tales about L.B., who was a long-time inactive church member. They said he caught rides to work 20 miles away, and would walk home rather than pay for a ride. L.B. lived simply, but he was not poor. "He's got so much money in the bank that they had to put him on the board," one of my deacons claimed. They said he was so miserly that he drove his old pickup truck at night with the lights off to save his battery. (I didn't believe that story.) L.B. owned the land around our church. It had been so long since he nailed his barbed-wire fence to the trees that the trees had grown around the wire several inches. The wire was so old and rusty that it often broke, and his cows wandered onto our church lawn.

Being the good pastor that I was, one Sunday afternoon I took my wife and went to visit L.B. Mary and I could barely get to the door for all the junk piled on the porch. We were greeted by L.B., his parents and dozens of cats. Mary sad down on the couch and noticed a live chicken in a bucket next to the couch, with chicken wire on top. L.B. and his parents rolled their own cigarettes and smoked as we talked. I talked to them about the Lord. They said they believed. I encouraged them to attend church; they made a few excuses, and we left.

I didn't see or hear from L.B. for a long time. He never came to church, and he never gave any offering. Then one Wednesday, we had the church windows raised during prayer meeting, since it was a mild autumn evening. Suddenly I heard a man's voice calling, "Ooo! Ooo!" We looked outside, and there was L.B. with his truck parked in the middle of the road, throwing a bale of hay on the road and calling up his cows from all around our church to feed. We were so far in the woods that he had time to finish feeding them in the road and leave before another car came by that way.

Although it was rare to see a vehicle on the road in front of our church, one night as I was driving near the church, I suddenly saw a pickup in the shadows turn on his lights. As we drove by, I saw the silhouette of L.B. in the cab of the truck. Then as he passed, the lights went off again.

Jesus warned, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven...For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matthew 6:19-21, NIV)

Not many Christians are as extreme as L.B., but are you, like L.B., so consumed with making money here on earth that you ignore the church and the Lord right next to you? Don't wait until you meet the Lord head-on to turn on your lights. It may be too late.

Copyright 2008 by Bob Rogers.

Dads, Dead Squirrels and Teachable Moments

A father and son were riding home from church, and the boy was filling out a crossword puzzle. The boy said, "How do you spell God?" The father was excited to help in his spiritual development, and gladly replied: "G-O-D," and asked, "Anything else?" The boy said, "Yes, how do you spell "Zilla?"
Brian Harbour tells about a little boy who told his dad that he saw a squirrel flattened in the road. The father saw it as a teachable moment about safety, and said, "That's what can happen to you when you play in the road."
Later, the boy was playing with his friends, and he said, "My Dad told me what happens to you when you die." His friends got wide-eyed, and asked, "What?" He answered: "You become a squirrel."
Sometimes our kids don't understand us, but we fathers have an awesome opportunity to influence the values of our children. Research shows that fathers have more influence than mothers in values development of children, especially spiritual values. A recent study found that when Mom attends but Dad does not, only 2 percent of the children grow up to be regular churchgoers. But if Dad attends and Mom does not, 44 percent of the children grow up to attend church regularly!
No wonder the Bible specifically tells fathers to bring up their children in the training and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Hey men, this Father's Day, set the spiritual tone in your household, and take your family to church with you. You'll be glad you did!

Don't Let Worries Kill You

Sometimes churches say things that fail to communicate what they mean.
A friend sent me a photograph of a church sign that had on its marquee, "Don't Let Worries Kill You-- Let the Church Help."
When I was in college, my pastor was telling a story during his sermon about his visit to the Hoover Dam. As he described his visit, he said, "I looked over the whole dam project." Nobody said a word, but when he realized how that sounded, his face turned red, and he immediately said, "I mean, the whole project of the dam." When he corrected himself, the congregation burst out laughing.
Once when I was pastor in a different place and different time zone, I was going over the church bulletin. I noticed that the secretary had typed the title of a hymn that looked strange. I showed the bulletin to the music minister, and he said that he had not connected the lines of his "K" and the secretary mistook his handwriting for the letters "IC." That explained why the bulletin said that we were going to sing, "Come Thou, Almighty Icing." (Maybe the secretary heard there was going to be dinner on the grounds with cake after church.)
One Sunday years ago, I was about to preach, when a deacon offered this prayer, "Lord, help us make it through Brother Bob's sermon." I don't know if he had stolen a look at my sermon notes and decided it was going to be a tough one to survive, but he told me later that his prayer came out wrong.
All of this confusing communication serves to illustrate an important way that you can pray for those who preach the gospel. In Colossians 4:4, the apostle Paul makes this request: "Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should."
The plain gospel is that we are all sinners, in need of a Savior, but Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sin, and the only way we can get to heaven is by faith in Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, churches can sometimes get that message garbled. They may say there are many different ways to heaven. But Jesus said, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, NIV). They make salvation a matter of good deeds rather than faith alone. Yet the Bible says, "For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9, NIV).
So the next time you pray for your pastor's sermon, add a request that he makes the gospel crystal clear. I promise, it will help you make it through his message.

(Copyright 2007 by Bob Rogers.)

The Mississippi squirrel

About twenty years after Ray Stevens wrote “Mississippi Squirrel Revival,” something very similar actually happened.
The famous song told about visiting Mississippi and experiencing “the day the squirrel went berserk in the First Self-Righteous Church in that sleepy little town of Pascagoula.”
Ironically, a squirrel really did go berserk in the First Baptist Church in the sleepy little town of Poplarville. Although it does not rhyme with “hallelujah,” Poplarville and Pascagoula are both in south Mississippi, and since Poplarville, with 2,500 residents, is about ten times smaller than Pascagoula, it well qualifies as a sleepy town. And what happened there made Ray Stevens sound like a prophet.
I was pastor of First Baptist Church of Poplarville from 1991 to 1999. A few months before I moved to Georgia, we were having problems with squirrels around the church. One day a deacon and I chased one into the choir room, where he purchased his freedom by flying out of the window and landing on the street two stories below. On another occasion, a squirrel got in a transformer and sacrificed its life to put the church in the dark.
After I moved to Georgia, Butch Knight became pastor of the church in Poplarville.
During Brother Butch’s ministry, Poplarville had “The Great Squirrel Incident.” He says that it all began on a Sunday morning in January 2002, about three minutes before the beginning of the worship service. The pastor noticed several choir members standing up and looking at something. Then he heard a scream, and he saw a squirrel leap up on top of the grand piano. His bushy tail waved, and he held his little hands in front of himself, as if he was greeting the congregation.
The men of the church went after him, taking off their suit coats and sport coats, and throwing them at the squirrel, with no thought that if they captured the squirrel, he might shred their expensive coats to pieces.
The squirrel started making laps in front of the choir loft, trying to escape. One man in the choir aimed the deadliest missile he could find at the squirrel: a hymnal. As it missed the creature with a loud thud, the pastor wondered how he was going to tell his children’s sermon on the sacredness of life by explaining why they killed a squirrel in church.
Then the squirrel ran up the American flag pole. Next, he ran across the front of the church, and ran up the Christian flag pole. Since the men were trying to throw their coats over him, he high-tailed it toward the back of the church, running under pews. Although the pastor could not see the creature, he could tell where he was, because it looked like the congregation was doing the wave as people were jumping pews and shouting from the front pew to the back. Some people were laughing and saying aloud, “Are we in Pascagoula?” (Do I hear a hallelujah?)
At one point, the squirrel ran back into the grand piano, and they closed the lid, trapping him inside. But how could they have church with him inside the piano? So they let him out and he fled again.
At last, a fellow wearing a winter coat managed to throw it over the squirrel. The darkness inside the coat calmed the squirrel, and he grew still. The man was able to take him outside and set him free. The pastor looked at his watch. It was 11:15, and they had spent 18 minutes chasing a varmint in church.
Did the church break out in revival, as in the Ray Stevens song? Brother Butch says they mostly broke out in laughter. But since some folks were going through difficult times, it was what they needed at the time.
Some time later, the church secretary’s 9-year-old son was playing at the church, and he chased a squirrel into the worship center, where it perched on top of the flag pole. It was a weekday, not a Sunday, and nobody was there except the boy and the squirrel. The boy picked up a rubber ball, and managed to hit the squirrel on the nose. The animal fell to the floor, motionless. The little boy felt terrible, but it was too late-- the squirrel was stone dead.
Whether or not the squirrel that died that day was the same squirrel that went berserk in a Sunday service, nobody will ever know. But I do know this: you can run wild for a time, but eventually you die. The Bible says that we’re all destined to live, die, and face Judgment Day (Hebrews 9:27). As Amos 4:12 says, “prepare to meet your God.”
So if your life is going nuts, take a lesson from a squirrel. Trust in Jesus to save you from sin, and you’ll be ready for whatever life throws at you. And when that happens, your fight for survival will break out in revival, and you’ll shout “hallelujah.”
Copyright 2006 by Bob Rogers